The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (14:16-24)

Invitations and excuses. That is what this parable is all about. It is about a God who invites us to partake of His great banquet and those who find excuses not to attend. This invitation can be seen on a few different levels.

First it is an invitation to the great banquet of paradise, the kingdom of heaven. Did you know that God has sent His Son to the world so that the whole world might be invited to enter into heaven? It is true. St. John writes, “And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” (1Jn 4:14) 

God deeply desired salvation to be a possibility for all people. What is salvation? It is the restoration of fellowship between God and man. It is communion between God and man. And as far as God has it within His power to do so, He has restored and healed that relationship from His side. Now since God is a God of love, He does not force His people to engage in this relationship. He doesn’t coerce them. He simply invites them.

He doesn’t take any pleasure in seeing His creation suffer or perish. He takes pleasure in seeing His people grow and be healed and reestablished in His grace and presence. So God works tirelessly to extend grace to us. To invite us over and over and over again. It is an invitation to repentance and to communion with Christ. It is an invitation to leave behind all of our sins and the things that are weighing us down and to turn back to Christ.

He invites us to come to Him. He invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good. He invites us to come and sit with Him and spend time with Him and speak with Him and dine with Him. And this brings us to another layer of meaning in today’s parable. We can see the banquet as a representation of the life of the Church especially the Divine Liturgy. The Liturgy is in fact a continuation of heavenly worship. What we do here is a reflection of what the angels and saints perform in the heavenly places.

One of the reasons why we adorn the church building with icons is to remind us that the saints are present with us because this is an extension of the kingdom of God. This is the most important place on earth, why? Because Christ Himself becomes present in this place through the Holy Spirit. How? In the Liturgy, in the bread and the wine that are transformed into Christ’s body and blood. So this is the most important place on earth because the liturgy is the most important event on earth. We make plans and we daydream about everything that we would like to do in life, yet in the liturgy, everything that we could ever need is here right before our very eyes because Christ is here.

The Serbian bishop and theologian Athanasius Jevtic wrote that “The Liturgy is found at the very center of life, experience and understanding of the Orthodox Catholic Church of God and consequently at the center of Orthodox Theology. For the being and life itself of the Orthodox Church consists of the Liturgy, because the very being of the Church of Christ is liturgical and Her very life eucharistic.”

When newcomers attend the Orthodox Church they often ask us how they should proceed. What should they do to become Orthodox. Those are decent questions. But they are not the best questions. The best question is always, what must I do to be saved? What will help me to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ? What will help me to grow in love? What must I do to be transformed in the image and likeness of God? Where should my focus be? To all of those questions I would humbly say that the answer is found in the Divine Liturgy which is a pinnacle of Christian worship.

St. Sophrony of Essex writes that “The Divine Liturgy is the way we know God and the way God becomes known to us…every Divine Liturgy is a Theophany. The body of Christ appears.”

and St. John of San Francisco said “For a man’s complete sanctification, the body of the servant of the Lord must be united with the Body of Christ, and this is accomplished in the Mystery of Holy Communion.” But he continues by reminding us that something is required of us as well, that it is necessary for us to accept the invitation joyfully and with a firm intention. He says, “But those who partake with piety, love and readiness to serve Him, closely unite themselves with Him and become instruments of His Divine will.”

Now that we have heard all of these beautiful things about the banquet to which we have been invited, does it make sense for us to make excuses and to keep ourselves busy with other matters instead of attending the banquet? You might think that life is out there somewhere, while in fact, life, true life, divine life, the life of God is here in this place where God meets His people in the form of the bread and the wine. You are invited as is the whole world to partake of this feast. And to partake of what this banquet represents, which is God’s invitation for us to be where He is, to sit with Him, to eat with Him, to abide in His holy house, to be His honored guests, to become like Him through grace.

The good news is that right at this moment, you are physically present here. May your hearts and minds also be fully present during this banquet which is just a foretaste of the great banquet to which we all have been called. “Many are called but few are chosen.” May we be numbered among the few through the prayers of the saints. AMEN.

Source: Sermons